Mechanisms Become Mechanics: Inventing Puzzles for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

The variation extends to how in-depth these puzzles will be, too, but a key goal for the team has been not to tie the idea of size directly to difficulty. The core storyline includes some of the game’s most wide-ranging puzzle sequences but, when a puzzle is mandatory, being too difficult could cause some players to get frustrated. Equally, you don’t want puzzle fanatics to feel like it’s too easy. This is where the game’s specific Adventure Difficulty setting comes in, allowing players to tailor how they want to play:

“Naturally, many of the bigger puzzles are intricately tied to the story,” says Andersson. “We’ve taken special care with those since they need to be accessible to all types of players and made sure they support our ‘light’ Adventure Difficulty level. If you play on that one, you’ll still get to experience the fun of solving the puzzle, but it won’t require as many steps or be as challenging as the normal Adventure Difficulty level is.”

And if you do get stuck, Indy comes equipped with an optional tool to ease any friction – you can pull out his camera and snap a picture to be given hints:

“While some people, me included, can enjoy spending large amounts of time trying to crack a particularly hard puzzle, that is not for everyone, and we want to support those players too. At the same time, having the game nag that hints are available just because you spent a little bit extra time to explore can be annoying and stressful, and take you out of the experience, so we wanted a way to provide hints without them being pushed on you.